Panoramas Billefjord Nord

Nordenskiöldbreen

Urmstonfjellet is towering high above its icy surroundings south of upper Nordenskiöldbreen. This is the amazing view from its northeastern corner. In the west, you can see Billefjord and, if you look carefully, the Russian settlement Pyramiden. The huge glacier Nordenskiöldbreen is dominating much of the scenery. In the east, it leads up to the ice cap Lomonossovfonna.

As so many of its kind, Nordenskiöldbreen has retreated in recent years and thus some small, rocky islets came out under the ice – again, as they had been ice-free before and were covered by the glacier during an advance. The rocks are amongst the oldest known in Spitsbergen.

Hørbyebreen northwest of Petuniabukta. The mountains there are amongst the most beautiful ones in Spitsbergen, including the ciant stone spider Tarantellen. Geologically, the area is also very interesting: the Billefjorden Fault Zone, an important set of now inactive geological „cracks“, is well visible there. Hørbyebreen is in winter part of the route to Pyramiden, in summer it is a possible trekking route to Ålandsvatnet and Austfjord.

Petuniabukta: Ebbadalen

The increasingly strong spring sun has melted, or rather vaporized, much of the snow here in lower Ebbadalen on the east side of Petuniabukta, giving way to a desert-like impression of spring in the arctic.

A unique bit of scenery in inner Ebbadalen, where a waterfall is frozen solid in winter. Wide areas of mirror-like ice cover the valley floor between moraine hills and glacier-polished rock slopes.

Pyramiden

This area in central Pyramiden was a meadow of grasses from Siberia, where only children and reindeer were allowed to roam until the settlement was abandoned in 1998. The sign of the mining company and of course Lenin are amongst Pyramiden’s most popular photo objects. The Lenin bust is probably the northernmost one of its kind, unless there is another one somewhere in those few parts of the Russian arctic which are even further north. I have been to the old station on Rudolf Island in northern Franz Josef Land and I haven’t seen any Lenin there. Let me know if you know of any Lenin further north.

Bar and restaurant of Hotel Tulipan, not long after the re-opening of the hotel in spring 2013. Not a bad place to spend some time: the service was surprisingly good and the food rich, but Russian style: don’t be surprised about chicken and rice for breakfast. The prices remind, however, of western capitalism, Longyearbyen-style.

The “bottle house”

The famous “bottle house” just outside of Pyramiden on the settlement’s western side (away from the fjord). One can only guess how much time it took them to get the building materials ready 😉 Said to be 5308 bottles! The bottle house was built in 1983.

Yggdrasilkampen 1

Yggdrasilkampen is the mountain on the southern side of Mimerdalen, where the well-known Russian ghost settlement of Pyramiden is situated. It is the long ridge which you constantly see as you look from Pyramiden across the valley. An impressive mountain with a wide plateau with some protruding ledges. It won’t surprise you to read that the view from these ledges is great. The fact that the sun is coming from a good direction for most views of interest during mid-day and afternoon does not hurt either. To the west, you can see the valleys disappearing in the distance in beautiful Dickson Land, you have got Pyramiden more or less to the north or northeast and all the way to the east, you can see Billefjord and Nordenskiöldbreen. All this together makes for quite an impressive panorama! I hope that the panos on this page manage to transport a bit of that impression.

Yggdrasilkampen 2

The „problem“ is that you have to have to get there to enjoy the view. As a round trip from and to Pyramiden, ascending Yggdrasilkampen from Billefjord and descending down to the valley in the west, it is almost 20 kilometres. You are climbing a net altitude of 583 metres. The ascent and descent are both quite challenging: steep slopes with lots of loose scree, that definitely requires good confidence to move around in that kind of terrain. And you have to know the right spots where you actually can get up and down, mostly it is just too steep!